New Discoveries and Honors in Cancer Research

Carey K. Anders, MD (Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator '12-'15), and C. Ryan Miller, MD, PhD (Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator '09-'12) of UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, Chapel Hill, and colleagues, reported that they identified a drug treatment strategy that can improve survival for a particularly aggressive breast cancer sub-type (triple negative breast cancer) after it has spread to the brain. They demonstrated, in a mouse model of this cancer, that a combination of the drugs carboplatin and a PARP inhibitor improved survival. The researchers hope that these findings will lead to a clinical trial that would allow researchers to test this treatment strategy in patients. These results were published in the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics.